The Adventures of Piratejoe (Part 3): Soloing Onyxia

Until recently, I had never ventured into Onyxia’s lair. Being a BC baby, I’d missed out on many of the Azeroth raids. I wanted to be able to see Onyxia before Patch 3.2 came out, and the old Onyxia became no more, being revamped as a level 80 10 and 25 man raid. I had read that she was soloable by a level 80 (and even by epic level 70s who really knew their stuff), so I thought I would give it a go.

There is no attunement to get into Onyxia’s lair. The nearest flight path is Mudsprocket in Dustwallow marsh, and from there just ride on to the cave and go through the iron jaw like gate. You will of course, need to be a raid group (min level 55) to do this, although the other raid member does not need to be with you, or even in the same zone. In fact, I got Anelf to create a horde Death Knight, just so he could join a raid with me, so I could solo Onyxia.

There are only a couple of trash mobs before Onyxia. Clear them all, including the one standing near the door, that you can actually bypass, as if you don’t there is a chance they will add during the second phase of the fight.

The Onyxia fight has 3 phases. It too me 3 attempts to work out phase 2. Phases 1 and 3 were really easy. My successful attempt took about 25 minutes, as a Prot Pally, though I think I should be able to do it in less next time.

Phase 1 100% health – 66% health

A fairly simple tank and spank. She had a knock back, so try to tank her with you back to the wall, and not too close to the whelp eggs that are located to the left and right of the entrance. If you get knocked into the eggs, whelps will spawn and you will need to deal with them too. As an AOE Prot Pally, this is not all bad, you can use the whelps to regen mana/health if you need to, although for part 1, I didn’t find either a problem. Most of the damage is fire damage, so I used fire resistance aura, blessing of sanctuary, and judgement of wisdom.

Phase 2 66% health-40%health

At 66% health Onyxia becomes airborne and summons whelps. You need to continue to DPS Onyxia down, reducing her health to 40% to get her to ground again and enter phase 3. This was by far the hardest stage for a melee class. She does quite a lot of damage during this phase (mostly from fire balls), but she also moves around. I found it hard to stay in range for all my main DPS skills, and often when I did hit something, I would get an error message saying that I was facing the wrong way. Not continually DPSing also meant that I was not regenerating health and mana as fast as I normally would, so I was having to heal myself a lot. I found a good tactic, was to switch to targeting the whelps and AOE them down, before turning back to Onyxia, every time I got very low on mana/health since this helped me regen mana/health quicker than when I was targeting Onyxia who keep moving out of target range or behind me. Just persevere, use your bubbles, lay on hands, and potion if you need to during this phase, and DPS her down as quickly and effectively as you can. I don’t feel the expert yet, and would like some better tips if anyone has any, but feel confident I could do it again, and much better next time.

Phase 3 40% health to dead

After Phase 2, Phase 3 is cake. She is on the ground during this phase, and doesn’t summon adds, unless you get feared into them. She doesn’t have a knock back, but does have a regular fear. Took a little while, but once I got to this phase, I was always going to win.

Great fun, and epic battle. You get a feat of strength achievement, plus about 57G, several blues and purples, Onyxia’s head, which starts a quest, and an 18 slot bag. Once you are done, click on Onyxia’s head to start a quest, and take it off to Orgrimmar or Stormwind. You get your head placed on a spike at the gate – it makes you feel so proud :D

3 responses to “The Adventures of Piratejoe (Part 3): Soloing Onyxia”

Ugh I wish, I am only lvl 66 as of right and a Shadow Priest. I may have to run thru it with a few guildies in the 70+ range and get that achievement before the lvl 80 change to it! Seeing that Dragon head makes me jealous!

Piratejoe let me take along my lvl 58 trainee DK (Porkpie) to another Onyxia slaughterfest last night. Porkpie was fine in phase 1, but died very quickly in phase 2. I went off and browsed some websites for 20 minutes before Onyxia was dead and Pj could rez me. :-)